}If anyone out there knows of vendors for video frame grabbers for
}Suns (VME or S-Bus boards: digitizers, live video, video + graphics,
}anything) I would really appreciate hearing from them - also good
}and bad experiences with any of this equipment would be very useful.
}Thank you very much in advance.

I received *a lot* of replies, mostly requests for summaries, but some
extremely useful information too. Thanks to everyone for putting so much
effort in those replies.
All replies I received are after the credits; first come all the
product-specific comments; the last 2 messages are rather long summaries of
addresses of third party developers of Sun Hardware, which I thought many
might like to store for future reference.
The lines comprised of all single quotes (''''''') are my partitions
between messages.

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From: broscius@dsl.cis.upenn.edu (Al Broscius)
RasterOps makes a card that does true color video with an optional card
to do live video in a window that can be snarfed to disk.
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>From poirson@white.stanford.edu (Allen Poirson)
We have a board that works, that works, so they are
shipping it. The first few that we had broke, but
they replaced them very fast, and for the most part,
as much as we have used it, it seems to work as
advertised.
One potential drawback is that you cannot use OpenLook
with it. Everything is in Sunview. They tell us
that the OpenLook software will be coming out real
soon now (come to think of it, there is not a manual
yet for it).
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>From uhley@albion.dei.caltech.edu (John Uhley) Tue Jan 8 22:18:40 1991
There's a copy in the Berkeley/Oakland area which makes a number of
frame grabber and live video type toys for Sun workstations. They
were called "RGB Technologies" a few years ago, but I *think* they
changed their name slightly last year. Sorry, don't have any additonal
details -- they were present at the Sun Expo last July in San Jose though...
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>From stuart@earth-sciences.leeds.ac.uk (Stuart Borthwick) Wed Jan 9 02:19:36 1991
Lyon Lamb sell a scanner called an RTC-7. It takes the RGB cable from the Sun
as input and outputs NTSC or PAL. I've seen it demonstrated and it looks
good. I think the problem is the price :- US$28000 for the RTC and about
another US$5000 (I think) for an animation controller.
Here is the address I have for Lyon Lamb :-

Lyon Lamb Video Animation Systems Inc
4531 Empire Avenue
Burbank
California 91505 (818) 843-4831
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>From mcgraw@sunspot.sunspot.noao.edu (Robert McGraw) Wed Jan 9 06:50:54 1991
We are using Parallax VideoView board. This is the board that Sun was
going to support but turned it over to Parallax. We have it installed
in a 4/110 and it has worked fine. One nice feature with Parallax
board is the software is built in the SUNOS i.e. no new software
to add. When the board first came out we were one of the first
to get the board and the doc was not to good. But the people we called
at Parallax were very helpful and we got it going without much
trouble. GOOD PRODUCT.
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>From jimh@nsd.fmc.com. (Jim Hendrickson) Wed Jan 9 07:37:45 1991
I'm not sure what you want to do. I've seen r2-170 framegrabbers used with one of the scan converters (RGB Technologies or something like that.
We have used DataCube vision processing equipment for some machine control
research and that included a framegrabber/digitizer. If you end up scarce
on information, mail me directly and I'll research it furthur. It may
be that we still have it and can get rid of it cheap. All of it is VME-based.
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>From nwha@engineering.cambridge.ac.uk (Neil Armstrong) Wed Jan 9 08:39:35 1991
We have been using the Matrox MVP system on a sun4/370 for some time. The
boards are great, but the Matrox software needs a bit of tweaking ( not
difficult) to get it working properly on a sun 4. We have written our own
menu-based software to access the libraries supplied.
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>From cdp@hertz.njit.edu (Chris Peckham) Wed Jan 9 08:54:54 1991
There is a system called `Maxvideo/Digimax' from a company called Datacube
(I can get the address for you, if you need it)

I installed this system on a Sun 4/330 about a year ago. It hooks into the
VME bus and has the capability of all sorts of memory boards and a hard
drive for real time video playback. A nice system from what I could see,
but I only played with it for a short time.

If you need configuration details and/or a contact address, let me know.
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>From cook@stout.atd.ucar.EDU Wed Jan 9 09:12:44 1991
Carlo, I am not sure if this is what you had in mind for a video
frame grabber, but there is a nice film recorder called the Focus ImageCorder
Plus 4600/4700 series that takes nice pictures of the screen. The input
to the device is RGB and it supports a bunch of camera formats, including
movies. Talk to Joe Lombardo at BFA (303) 771-7474 if you want to find
out more.
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>From mjk@mayo.EDU (Mark Korinek) Wed Jan 9 09:45:34 1991
Carlo,

I am not sure of your applications with the video equipment but here is what
we have here in our lab. We do production and editing of interactive SUN
video for demonstration and education purposes dealing with medical imaging
incorporated in a program developed here at Mayo. Our main piece of equipment
is a FRAME SCAN CONVERTER which takes the high resolution sun video and
converts it to RS-170 component video and NTSC composite video. The CONVERTER
is from:
RGB Spectrum
2550 Ninth Street
Berkeley, CA 94710
415-848-0180
They also make a video windowing system for workstation displays
targetted for the sun environment. I do not have any experience
with this product but I do have seen data sheets on it.

We then encode the video for recording and editing on 3/4 and 1" tape
machines. The video is converted in real time and we have been very happy
with the performance of the product for over 3 years
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>From don@redcloud.scd.ucar.EDU (Don Middleton) Wed Jan 9 09:55:05 1991
Yes, we do have such a beast here and its made by Parallax and is
called VideoView. Its a 9U VME board that provides frame-grabbing
for a live video source, live video in a window, as well as the
functions of a VME-bus video frame buffer for output. The latter
application is what we're primarily using it for. The device
works fine, was relatively easy to bring up, but did not come
with software to act as a video frame buffer. I've developed
my own and it works fine. The board, software, and doc costs
about $11K. The original version worked with SunView although
my drivers are used under X primarily and Parallax, I believe,
has released an X version now themselves.

We load imagery from disk, convert it, write it into
the memory-mapped space for the VideoView board, and then
route the resulting video signal into an Abekas Digital
Frame Store where we record it. Done frame-by-frame this
gives us our animation system. Its fast, 2 or 3 NTSC
images per second from SCSI, and good quality. It ain't
cheap though, because you've got to have a 9U slot
and Sun's packaging is getting ridicoulous. RasterOps
also markets an S-bus board that will get live video
in and rumor has that video out will be available soon
too. Another rumor has to do with a product from Sun.
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>From jpc@avdms8.msfc.nasa.gov (J. Porter Clark) Wed Jan 9 14:04:44 1991
I've been using the 1280 board set made by Parallax Graphics. The
software I need to run with is it somewhat out of sync with the SunOS
I'm running (same old story) and Parallax may have made giant strides
in hardware and/or software in the meantime, so what I tell you about
it may not be current. We bought the thing to run live video in a
window along with text and graphics windows. This it does. The
software I have is actually NeWS-based (they call it PNeWS), but there
is (or was--I haven't checked the latest release) support for it in the
X11 distribution somewhere. I am running their board set in a lowly
3/460 on a separate monitor (a Sony). I usually crank up SunView,
start the NeWS server, and run adjacentscreens so I can use the same
keyboard and mouse for both displays. The Parallax documentation is
adequate to tell you how to do this. I've never actually written any
real software for it. It does what I need it to do, for the most
part. It does have still-frame video capability also, but I don't use
it for that much. It's fairly impressive on that Sony monitor. The
Parallax documentation refers to a stereo video version being
available, but I know nothing about it. Losses, bugs, brain-damage:

1. To run X11, you need the X distribution, a Logitech mouse or
something like it, and a DEC LK201 keyboard (same as on a VT240). I
had hopes that Parallax would have a workaround someday--maybe they do
now.

2. Under PNeWS, the live video image is either one size (about 1/4th
the display) or another size (the whole display, more or less). If you
go to the full display, everything is twice as tall and twice as wide,
including menus. If you shrink or expand the surrounding window, the
picture is either cropped or filled with white space below and to the
right of the image, respectively.

3. You can't position a live video image on the desktop with the same
amount of resolution as you can other windows. The increments are
somewhat larger and are about equal to the width of the border around a
window.

4. Placing another window on top of the live video image will typically
cause some of the image around (and particularly to the right of) the
top-layer window to be whited out. This is most obvious if the
upper-layer image is not rectangular.

5. Live video does consume some system resources. (I have heard of
boards where this supposedly is not the case.) You can adjust the
relative priority of the live video updating via a menu. Decreasing
the priority of the live video causes it to appear jerky if there are
other tasks competing for the same resources.

6. The board set is somewhat of a hog in terms of power consumption and
space. It takes up 4 6U VME boards; Parallax supplies it in a Dawn VME
adapter that makes it appear to be 4 Sun VME boards. The adapter has
two small fans on it which try to help keep the thing cool. Power
consumption is rated at 100 W or so which is rather a lot. I have run
it in the Sun card cage, but am now running it in a Mupac card cage
which is connected to the Sun card cage via a Performance Technologies
bus repeater. I haven't noticed any speed penalties associated with
that setup. (But see #8 below.)

7. There is the usual endless battle to keep the OS and the software
revision levels synced up. I haven't ever had to retrofit the board
itself.

8. I've had some occasional problems running a lot of CPU-intensive
things at the same time as PNeWS. Things would lock up, or run much
slower than they really ought to. These problems have been sporadic
and hard to characterize. They might all stem from #7 above or my
peculiar hardware configuration, too. The only common denominator is
that problems always occur during demonstrations to VIP's. :-)
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>From raczka@vela.acs.oakland.edu (christopher raczka) Wed Jan 9 14:28:36 1991
Carlo,

There are TWO products that I know of, and
that I have used; I'd hope there are others by now,
but I'am not sure

RGB Technologies

and

Parallax Inc

I attempted to use both (VME) and had an easier go of it
with the RGB

RGB themselves were very supportive and the equipment worked
as advertised, which is rare these days!

I found Parallax to be non-responsive for any type of technical
support and only got the product working after several months
of my own time was invested after hours

The differences, well, with the RGB I could grab single frames
that I could store and replay for giving the impression of
"live" video

With Parallax I could actually see any obeject that moved in front
of an attached camera, LIVE on the console in an X11 window

I don't have the phone numbers to either company, sorry, as my
project to investigate this technology was done about 1 1/2 years ago

I have heard that frame grabbers are about to drop in price with
the development of a new ``do-everything'' chip, but that is all
I have heard. I would appreciate being forwarded your responses,
since I have been waiting to hear more on this. Thanks,

-Randy Fischer <fischer@math.ufl.edu>
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From: thos@gargoyle.uchicago.edu
We are going to be doing some vision processing research
using Datacube 6U VME boards connected to a sparcstation
via an Sbus to VMEbus converter sold by Performance
Technologies. A camera will feed datacube boards. Digitized
images will move among the datacube boards and to the cpu
for analysis.

I don't have any experience with this stuff yet. I've got
the Datacube boards sitting in a VME chassis and have poked
around in their control registers, etc. but am waiting for
the Sbus to VMEbus converter and video equipment to arrive.

We've dealt with a fellow named Glen Ahearn at Datacube,
(508/535-6644) and with James Mooney (716/586-6727) at
Performance Technologies. The Sbus to VME adapter is
part number PT-SBS915 and costs about $2300. The datacube
boards start at about 4K apiece.
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>From edguer@alpha.ces.cwru.edu (Aydin Edguer) Wed Jan 9 10:40:57 1991
My suggestion would be to contact your Sun Sales representative. They
have a copy of the Catalyst catalog which would tell you this information.

Aydin Edguer
Facilities Manager
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From: rcsmith@anagld.analytics.com (Ray Smith)
Carlo,
I did some checking in my archives (a little over three
years of sun-spots, sun-managers, sun-nets, sun-flash and several
other sources) and came up with the following messages. In addition
to the new Sbus product that Parralax is coming out with they have
a VME product which I have used with a video disk based mapping
system. I have seen the VME also do live video at a conference.

>Is there a True Color or Gray Scale digitizer available for the Sbus which
>may be suitable for capturing hires Computer Tomograph or MRI output ? I
>heard that there is a well performing VME-product from Parallax, but that
>one requires at least a Sun-4/330.

Someone then lead me to RasterOps, Santa Clara, from which I already knew,
that they had a 24-bit true color frame buffer for the Sbus. On the phone
I was told, that end of this month the new SPARC Card TC PIP will be
released. It unifies buffer and grabber in one card which occupies two
slots in a SPARCstation 1(+). It is available in NTSC and PAL. The
incoming NTSC/PAL composite, RSG or S-Video signal can be displayed in a
life window on the workstation screen and resized up to 640x480 (NTSC) and
768x576 (PAL). The buffer is compatible with the SUN cg8 true color card
and also has an additional 1-bit frame buffer. SPARC Card TC PIP supports
16"/19" monitors from RasterOps or SUN (Sony Trinitron) drivers for X are
included, but the basic software (life video window & saver) runs under
Sunview. The TC PIP lists for $7,495 and $11,750 including 19" monitor.
Angela Poorman of international sales promised 40% discount for academic
institutions.

Recent backissues are available via anonymous FTP from "titan.rice.edu".
For volume X, issue Y, "get sun-spots/vXnY". They are also accessible
through the archive server: mail the request "send sun-spots vXnY" to
"archive-server@rice.edu" or mail the word "help" to the same address
for more information.

Please note: Any opinions expressed in this forum are the opinions of
the individual authors. Unless noted in the article, no individual
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The current list of SBus developers has grown to 135 products or services
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Highlights that have been added to the list since the last update of
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A list of known SBus products available (or soon to be) from third party
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The following list will be updated regularly and will reside in the
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If you have customers (end user or OEMs) with product requirements
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If you are aware of existing SBus products that you do not see described
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